


Narcissism

by agent_florida



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 21:48:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/agent_florida
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the boundaries aren’t defined, how do you draw the line, and where does it go?  It’s deeper than friendship, closer than love, stranger than truth… but it needs a word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Narcissism

At first it was like a toy.  It was like having access to the entirety of the Internet, but sizzling across a slot in the back of his armor.  The power was indescribable.  His aim got better overnight, he actually calculated out his moves instead of going by instinct, and it was like he had his eye back, like it should have been all along.

Then suddenly, it wasn’t a game any more.

There was no way to get any sort of separation from him.  He was always inside his head, and even if he wasn’t explicitly digging around, all of a sudden he seemed to pick up his memories by osmosis.  There were no secrets.  Everything that was in his mind, every thought that crossed his neurons, was somehow intercepted between point A and point B, and everything he’d picked up over the years was just added to that immense store of knowledge.

And it was getting uncomfortable.

It was okay when it was on the battlefield.  But during recreational hours, he wasn’t left alone.  There was always that presence, even when he was showering, even when he was naked, even when he put a sock on the door and tried to work out the stress.  And the worst part was he couldn’t even attempt to understand him.  There was some sort of translation barrier between the two of them – the AI’s processes were always linear, blocked, orderly, and he worked more on free association and impulse.

And then, one morning, he woke up and he was whole.

Delta wasn’t so foreign to him, and so he started calling him by a nickname.  His AI did the same, leaving off the formalities and shortening his call name to York.  It was a small sign, but one intimacy gradually led to another, and though they had been forced to share a body, they were finally beginning to share a mind.

It was one of those sleepless nights, the moon hanging heavy in a shimmer-heat sky and the sheets sticking to his skin, when he finally decided to say something about it.  “Dee.”

“Yes, York?”

“Can you give me a definition of the word ‘narcissism’, please?”

“Certainly.”  A pause; York could feel him riffling through the back of his head, information spilling everywhere in the process.  “For what purpose?”

“Just wondering.”  His hands came up behind his head.

“So the general definition will suffice?”

“Yes, Dee.”

There was a light green glow that pulsed across his skin as Delta gave him his definition.  “Narcissism: excessive self-love or vanity; self-admiration; self-centeredness.”

“Self-love.”  York tried the words out in his mouth.  “So is it narcissism, then, to love someone that’s so much a part of yourself that you can’t tell where he ends and you begin?”

“That would be an improper application of the word,” Delta said in that precise, mechanical manner.  Then he was quiet for a moment.  “Are you suggesting that you are losing your sense of self?   Ego reduction is a common side effect of implantation – I recommend reporting this to the Councillor immediately.”

“It’s nothing to report, Dee.  I’m glad it’s happening.”

He could vaguely feel Delta spluttering at him, trying to find some objection, but he was silent for some minutes, his algorithms going crazy.  Finally, he spoke up.  “Recognition of attractive qualities, natural affinity, sympathy… concern for other’s welfare, pleasure in presence… I see.”

York laughed to himself softly.  “Are you really looking up the definition of ‘love’?”

Delta just continued.  “Great liking, emotional attachment… emotional attachment,” he repeated.  He rarely repeated himself.  “I fail to understand any point at which this would be useful.”

“Are you kidding me?”  It was so easy to list the ways.  “I have my eye back, Dee.  I feel like I’m useful, instead of a cripple and a mutant and a freak.  You let me do what I’m good at.  And sympathy?  We share _everything_.  What we have goes so far beyond that.”

“Emotional attachments have the possibility of being exploited, should we be captured or incapacitated.”

He’d used the plural.  York was making progress.  “Should that happen – and I don’t think it will, now that I have you – they can’t take you away from me.  There’s no way to separate us.”

“Not without great psychological risk,” Delta agreed.

“Not at all,” York corrected him.  “I won’t let anyone take you.”

The brief glow he could feel had nothing to do with the light on his chest or the pounding of his own heart.  But it fizzled out as quickly as he felt it, and the firewall Delta was hiding behind was almost tangible in his head.  “I believed myself to be incapable of forming emotional attachments,” he announced, voice even as it ever was.

“You’re impossible,” York grumbled good-naturedly.

“I was led to think that I was merely a collection of code, subsumed by something greater,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard York’s interruption.  “Somehow, I seem to have gained personhood.”

“And you’re confused,” York deduced.

“Precisely.  Cross-species romance is a universal taboo.”

Their laughter was shared this time; York was pleasantly surprised that Delta had cracked a joke.  “You think you’re a different species?”  He touched the back of his helmet, where he knew the slot was.  “You’re still human, Dee.  Somewhere in there, you’re based on a person – a real person, living and breathing and feeling – even if you don’t remember it.”

 “Then there is nothing further to discuss.”  His tone was resigned, but the firewall came down as he spoke, and York could feel the code flooding his mind, everything Delta had been keeping password-protected.

York sighed, letting the information flow through him.  “I love you, Dee.”  What he got in return was a garbled mess.  “I’m going to assume that makes sense to you.”

“I was under the impression that cardioid shapes were the preferred, if inaccurate, representation of the heart, which itself is the preferred, if inaccurate, organ in which common culture believes the feelings of love reside.”  He tsked, not even letting York interrupt him to ask him what he meant.  “Let me show you.”

He fell asleep with doodles of hearts on the insides of his eyelids.

**Author's Note:**

> Found this in my scraps and figured I might as well share it.


End file.
